Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
PHOENIX
“What do you mean she’s not here?” I rasped, pacing back and forth in front of the house.
“Ma, Reed, and Micah are out looking for her now. Reeds at the bowling alley, Micah’s gone to the beach, and Ma’s at the gym.
“At the gym?” I questioned, wondering why she’d gone there.
“Harper goes to yoga there, remember.” Ah, shit, of course.
“I suggest we split up,” Hudson huffed, making a move towards his Ranger.
I stopped him in his tracks, saying, “What about her cell?”
“It goes straight to voicemail,” Molly cut in, wringing her hands together.
“Did she not tell anyone where she was going this morning?”
Hudson and Molly exchanged a worried look, “That’s just it, Nix. She didn’t come home at all last night,” Molly informed me with a shaky voice.
What!? It felt like I’d taken a bullet to the chest.
“And I’m just hearing this now?” I roared, moving towards her. I didn’t feel like I was being overly aggressive, but my brother must have thought otherwise.
Molly held her hands up as Hudson stepped in front of his girl.
His protective mode had kicked in. “We only found that out ourselves this morning. Ma was up all night. I did call you, but you didn’t pick up.
I remembered you were going to see Summers last night.
That’s why Molly called Storm this morning,” he stated, clearly pissed that I’d used a harsher tone than he thought necessary with his girlfriend.
At that point, I didn’t give a shit about anything. I just wanted to find Harper.
Panic clawed through my chest, and my throat tightened. I felt like I was having a heart attack. I grabbed my cell and started thumbing through my call log. I counted six missed calls from Harper last night, and those two text messages. The ones you had ignored!
I’m sorry.
Please forgive me.
I also had missed calls from Hudson and one from Reed. I felt like launching my phone across the drive. Instead, I slid it back into my pocket, racking my brains for where she could be.
A twinge of worry crept through me as I thought about the Creed family getting to her. Anton Creed and his prick of a son were still in prison, and I knew that. I just wasn’t being rational. I needed Harper to be found.
“What about the Creeds?” I husked, dashing a hand down my face. Having slept in last night's clothes, I felt like crap.
Hudson shook his head. “No chance, they’re still inside, and they have no reason to come after Harper.”
“What about the younger son Harper was seeing?”
“Nick? No. He lives with his grandad now on the other side of the city. He has no connection to his brother or father. As far as their relationship goes, that ship has sailed,” Molly explained.
“So where in hell is she?”
“We don’t know, Phoenix, that’s what we’re trying to find out. She must be in trouble. There’s no way she’d run away now, not now you're together.”
And of course, Molly was wrong.
Fuck, this is my doing. She’s run away from me. From the shit I said to her.
“We need to call the cops. File a missing persons thing,” I shot out, clawing at my face. The wind blew angrily against the trees that surrounded our house, echoing my inner turmoil.
“It’s not been long enough to do that,” Hudson pointed out.
Turning on him, I got in his face. “What is long enough, Harper lying dead at the bottom of a ditch?” I snarled. Aggressive waves crashed through me.
“Calm the fuck down, Brutal,” he warned, his voice surprisingly quiet.
“You calm the fuck down. This is my fault,” I yelled, jabbing my hands into my chest.
“How is it your fault? She’s been a flight risk for some time,” My brother said with a scowl.
Hudson didn’t know her as I did. “She stopped talking about running away ages ago.” Taking a deep breath, I cocked my chin and told them. “I said some stuff yesterday, things that I shouldn’t have.”
My eldest brother then got his psycho on. That was a good thing, as I needed the strength that came from his erratic.
“What are you not telling me?” he growled, grabbing a fistful of my tee in his hand.
I allowed it, my shoulders dropping as I confessed. “We had a stupid fight, OK. I’m not proud of it.”
My brother yanked me forward, his nose at my jaw, “Fuck does that mean?”
“Both of you stop it,” Molly shouted, moving to push between us. Hudson swallowed and released my top before stepping back. At that point, I didn’t blame him if he wanted to pound on my face. I deserved it.
Molly was now deadly serious, all business, “We don’t have time for this. Phoenix, you know her the best. Where would she go when she’s upset?”
“Her room usually.”
“Well, as we know, she’s not there, and hasn’t been for some time.”
“Maybe she made her bed before she went out?”
Hudson shook his head. “No, Ma waited up all night. She never came home. How about a friend's house?”
Molly instantly put him right about that one, “No. Harper’s a bit of a loner. There’s only Storm and me. Please, Phoenix, think?”
“The places I would suggest are the ones where the others are already looking. I don’t know what else to say.”
My chest felt like it was going to cave in.
“Does she have someplace special, maybe one of her old foster homes or something?”
“No, she hated the Jacksons.”
“Come on, Nix. You need to fix this,” Hudson barked, impatiently pacing back and forth across the driveway. The shouting must have alerted our neighbors as Mrs Fellows started to eyeball us through her lounge window. Fucking curtain twitcher.
Clawing at my hair, I closed my eyes and lifted my chin to the sky. “I don’t know. I can’t think straight.” And then I dropped my head, opened my eyes, and confessed to everyone within hearing distance. “I love her,” I bellowed out, my entire body shaking.
Hudson placed a comforting hand on my shoulder. “We know you do, that’s why you will be the one to find her.”
And then, a thought occurred to me, and I grabbed my cell, clicking on Find My Phone.
It took a minute or two to access the app as my fingers were shaking. And there she was.
Sure enough, Harper’s location appeared on the map.
Lowering it, I glanced at Hudson, “What?” he shot out, glancing at my phone.
“I need your keys,” I stated, holding my hand out. I couldn’t chance taking the Jeep as the gas light was on.
Hudson shook his head and turned to Molly. “Stay here until Ma gets back. Tell her we think we’ve found her.”
He then strode past me. “You’re in no fit state to get behind a wheel. I’m driving.”
I nodded as we both got into Hudson’s truck.
Hudson fired up the engine and turned to face me.
“Let’s go get our girl.”
Damn straight.
HARPER
A loud noise erupted, followed by angry hissing and bubbling.
It sounded like it came from miles away, and I tossed my head to the side, suddenly trapped in that old nightmare I used to have.
The one where I was stuck in my house whilst it burned to the ground around my mother and me.
The smell of smoke tinged my nostrils as I thrashed against the mattress, attempting to wake myself the hell up.
I’d only closed my eyes for a minute, hadn’t I?
My brain was recalling how I had felt the moment I had pushed the door of my bedroom open, crying for my mother, only to see that part of our house was on fire.
And suddenly I was transported back, reliving that very moment.
Thick black smoke was pouring down the stairs, and the immense heat forced an instant sheen across my skin. Glancing down at my body, I had my Disney princess PJs on. They were my favorite as they had been a present from Daddy for my tenth birthday. And they still fit. Would I ever get big?
“I can’t even look at you,” Phoenix’s angry voice came from above me, somewhere in the ceiling, and I glanced up. It didn’t make sense. It was the night of the fire, that awful time, that I lost my parents. What was Nix doing there?
And then I heard screaming, the sound of my mother as she burned to death in her bed, and I drifted away again, seeing nothing else but blackness.
White noise…
The distant sound of sirens started to sink into my consciousness.
And then my nightmare became a reality as my eyes shot open and I saw the film of smoke spreading horizontally across the ceiling in all directions.
And I was awake.
What the hell?
Pushing up on my elbows, I glanced around my old room. Shit, I must have fallen asleep, or should I say, cried myself to sleep.
Panic kicked in as I looked around my bedroom at Radcliffe Manor.
It was foolish to go there after my fight with Phoenix, but I just needed somewhere that was familiar to me. I knew they were due to knock it down, but I had just needed one more moment.
Although old and fusty, my bed was the same as I had left it that night. Even the position of the sheets as I had peeled them off my body. It was both haunting and comforting at the same time.
I took a deep breath, maybe the smoke was all in my head, a figment of my twisted imagination, but as I choked, I realized it was real.
Eyeing the fumes, terror pooled into my stomach, and my limbs started to shake.
The house is on fire, again, for real? How long had I been sleeping? I could see daylight through the window, which must have meant I’d been there all night.
I was at Radcliffe Manor, my old home that was due to be demolished.
But why were there flames? I could hear noises coming from outside, again sirens, but closer now, and then the sound of machinery.
Were they demolishing the building now, with me in it?
Surely, they would have checked what was left of the building first?
What about squatters or the teenagers I had caught there once?
Or maybe my father had come back from hell to finish the job?
Terror lanced through me as I rolled over and fell onto the floor, skinning my knees. I was wearing denim shorts and a tee, and so my legs and arms were bare. I could hear more shouting and engine noises but the blood was rushing so loudly in my ears that everything was muffled.